


Blue

by dandypauper



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Afterlife, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Closure, Does this count as a fix-it?, Fix-It of Sorts, Force Ghost Anakin Skywalker, Force Ghost Ben Solo, Force Ghost(s), Gen, Ghosts, Han being Force-sensitive is alluded to but not super important, Redeemed Ben Solo, Self-Hatred, Skywalker Family Feels, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:26:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22027789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandypauper/pseuds/dandypauper
Summary: He had never really put much thought into what would happen to him after he died. Sure, once upon a time his mother had told him about how people could become one with the Force, or something- but after a certain point, he figured that the only thing awaiting him was... nothing. He hadn't done anything to deserve much more. So he died, and he'd made peace with that.Then he woke up. And he was glowing blue.(Or: Ben Solo becomes a Force ghost and doesn't think he deserves it.)
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 3
Kudos: 78





	Blue

It was so quiet. That was the first thing he noticed and, to be honest- the only thing he noticed for a while. It was amazing, not like anything he was used to. He thought that he’d known quiet before, but even then, his idea of absolute silence was peppered with muffled, clanking footsteps, the whisper of invisible cold air moving through vents, the everpresent _hum_ of a generator. This was different. It was complete, absolute silence, pillowing around his ears. And he would be content to stay here, drinking it all in-

_But-_

_Except-_

Except Kylo- _no, Ben, he was Ben now-_ wasn’t entirely sure where _here_ even was. The realization hit him in waves, dimly and slowly. It was like he was a little kid again, hiding in a warm cocoon under his bedcovers, refusing to wake up for at least five more minutes. Except-

_Exegol. Palpatine. Final Order. Rey- kriff, Rey-_

He was dead. Right?

Ben’s eyes shot open.

He was in the middle of a grassy field, one that continued along the horizon as far as he could see, broken up only by the occasional boulder. It was soft, not like the itchy stuff that he remembered playing in when he was a kid. Slowly, Ben pushed himself up onto his knees.

It was nighttime, but the stars illuminated everything with their soft, twinkling glow. He felt shaky, insubstantial, like he was simultaneously being pushed down by the crushing weight of gravity while also being lighter than air. It was _weird._

Strangely, he wasn’t really in any physical pain, though, even though logically he knew that he should probably be feeling like he had just been thrown off a cliff (because he had been). Once Ben was able to stand up on his own two feet, practiced instinct took over and he began to examine himself for injuries- except there weren’t any. Not a scratch on him, not even the hole in his shirt where Rey had healed him, not even the years-old scars that he had long since gotten used to. Somewhere in the back of his head, it felt like there was something else, something he was missing. Sluggishly, he put his hands out in front of his face. 

Oh yeah, and he was _blue. And glowing. And he could see the ground through his palms._

Ben let out an extremely undignified _yelp_ and promptly fell back onto his ass.

“Need a little help over there?” The voice came from behind him. It was young, sarcastic, amused. Ben spun around, looking for the source.

It came from another man, around his age, leaning casually against a rock. His hair was long, dark, and untidy- though it didn’t seem to be disturbed by the quiet wind that was moving through the rest of the grass. He also noted that the man's clothes ( _Jedi robes_ , he mused) must have been at least thirty years out of date, pre-rebellion.

The man rolled his eyes, “Han wasn’t kidding when he said you were slow, was he?”

There were already so many loose threads spinning around in Ben’s mind that he barely registered what the man had said. Only that the man was blue, too, and glowing, softly yet brightly. He felt like an idiot. _A kriffing force ghost._

_Just like him._

The man grinned, “Took you long enough,”

Even though he knew that air (and to a greater extent, vocal cords) shouldn’t really have been a concern for him anymore, he still seemed to have trouble getting the proper amount of air into his lungs to form words.

“You’re dead,” He pushed out lamely.

“Yep,” The man’s voice was bright.

“And I’m…”

“Ben Solo, it is with great sorrow that I must inform you that you are deader than the rock I’m sitting on,”

If it had been physically possible for Ben to fall back onto his ass a second time, he would’ve.

The man seemed to notice something on his face (he was never really that subtle with his emotions, that was what the mask had been for), and he pushed forward, hand outstretched. Ben took it, and pulled himself up.

Ben’s mind was running a bit more at normal speed, now, and was starting to catch up with all of those dull observations that he had made in the last couple of minutes. He started to dust off his pants before he realized that there wasn’t really anything to dust. The man laughed, high and bright.

Ben recognized that laugh, he’d heard it in Luke a million times as he was growing up.

“You…”

He took a wobbly step backwards. It took the man a minute to realize what was probably going through his head.

“Oh, right. Anakin Skywalker, at your service and all that,” He held out his hand again. Ben didn’t take it,

Instead, he bowed.

“Grandfather… it’s… it’s an honor to finally meet you,” When he came up again, his eyes were wide as saucers, “But I didn’t… I’d always thought that you… you were…”

Anakin smiled again ( _why was he always smiling?_ ), “Things change, Ben. I changed. Pretty last-minute, admittedly, but still. You’ve changed too,”

“I don’t feel like I’ve changed,”

“No one ever does. That’s just how change works, I guess. But you _did_ change, there has to be at least a part of you that knows that. After all- you wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t,”

Ben had never really put much thought into what would happen to him after he died. Sure, once upon a time his mother had told him about how people could become one with the Force, or something- after all, it was part of the story of his namesake, but as he’d grown up, all of that had fallen by the wayside. 

Once he had… _fallen_ , he supposed that was the right way to put it, that was what all the Jedi had called it, right? Anyway, once he had fallen, he’d just kind of assumed that the only thing which awaited him was… nothing. Which had terrified Kylo Ren to no end.

Snoke had always said that it was because those on the Dark burned like bonfires, pure and bright until they were snuffed out as quickly as they had come. He didn’t seem to think of that as a bad thing. Better to burn bright and quick than to be a smoldering ember, he supposed. 

He’d asked Luke that same question, once, when he was a teenager. Luke had said that it was because there was a certain kind of selflessness involved in that death, a willingness to devote yourself to the Force, that no Sith could ever possess.

Regardless of the _why,_ the _what_ stayed the same: _once someone on the Dark was gone, they were gone._

_So what the fuck was he doing here?_

“It would seem that you’ve decided to carry on the Skywalker tradition of making the right decision at the last possible moment,” Anakin laughed again, but this time there was a bitter sadness under it that he didn’t bother trying to hide.

Ben bit his lip, “I didn’t think… I wouldn't have thought that doing the bare minimum like I did would have been enough to deserve… dying like a Jedi,” the last part was whispered and breathless, like he still couldn’t quite believe that it was real and wouldn’t be ripped out of his hands at any given moment.

Anakin put a tentative hand on his shoulder, as if he expected Ben to jerk away at the slightest hint of contact. He didn’t.

“Neither did I, trust me. And you didn’t do the bare minimum, you were just a bit of a late bloomer. But I think… the fact that you were willing to do everything you did anyway, knowing full well, at least in _your_ mind, that it still wouldn’t be enough to change your fate, was what made all the difference. Selflessness. Luke told you that, didn’t he?”

Ben didn’t notice it, but Anakin did: slowly and unconsciously, instead of shying away from Anakin’s hand, he was leaning into it, clutching it against his chest like his life (or death) depended on it. 

_(Idon’tdeservethisIdon’tdeservethisIdon’tdeservethisIdon’tdeservethis)_

_(Stop it. You aren’t the one who gets to decide what you do and don’t deserve. You’re here, aren’t you?)_

_(YesGrandfather.)_

“I knew he was going to kill me if I went,” Ben whispered.

“But you went and did it anyway. Not because you had something to get out of it, but because it was the right thing to do. That feels pretty deserving to me, doesn’t it?”

No answer.

“I get the feeling we’re going to be having this conversation a lot, aren’t we? That’s okay. You’re here, deserving or not, so I guess we’d better get used to that, huh?”

Ben took a deep, shaky breath, one that he didn’t technically _need_ to be taking (but that was okay, being dead was a long process of getting used to things and he was just going to take them one at a time, it was going to be okay).

He noticed dimly that the Force felt… different, now. He’d been able to feel it for as long as he could remember, furiously swirling around everything, but here it felt… kinder? Gentler?

“I don’t even know where _here_ is…” He muttered, more to himself than to Anakin. Not that it really mattered.

Anakin grabbed his shoulders and pushed him up into a more dignified standing position. 

“It’s wherever you want it to be, Ben. The Force is everywhere, and so are you. Just… think of a place, and you’ll be there. I can be there too, if you want me to be. You have the entire Universe at your fingertips,” Anakin squeezed his shoulders one more time (which did make Ben flinch just a little bit, old habits die hard) and let his hands drop to their sides. There was a disconcerting lack of judgment in his eyes, only kindness and concern. 

Slowly, Ben leaned back and looked at the stars again. They were beautiful. Then he closed his eyes and _listened._

Ben Solo heard the call of the Light, soft and sweet, and for once, he reached out and took its hand, let it in.

Took a deep breath, just for the routine of it.

Felt it flow beneath his fingertips.

He didn’t think of a place, but a person.

**. . .**

“Gah, I hate the desert,” Anakin muttered. Ben ignored him. 

He’d never been on Tatooine before. It crossed his mind, once, to come and pay respects to his grandfather’s birthplace (though it would seem like Anakin wasn’t actually all that fond of it), but there had never seemed to be enough of a point. And then later, once upon a time he’d thought that all desert planets looked the same: Pasaana, Jakku, whatever. 

But Tatooine just felt different. Or at least this quiet, deserted, abandoned part of Tatooine. He wasn’t completely sure why. 

Maybe it was because the Suns were beginning to set, touching everything with their blinding, orange glow. They made Ben feel awfully, terribly small under the weight of the universe and the Force (Anakin assured him that it was a familiar feeling for most Skywalkers to have).

Maybe it was the history that he knew the place to have- not important, textbook-defining history, no, but history to him. Several generations of histories of boys that looked to the skies and saw something _more._ The sand seemed to whisper thousands of stories under his feet.

Maybe it was the fact that a cluster of people, people he recognized, had begun to emerge from the sand several meters ahead.

“Hey, kid. Nice of you to finally join us,” It was Luke. His mother was standing next to him. And- _kriff_ , he wasn’t glowing quite as brightly as the others, not by a long shot, but his _father-_

“Are you coming or what?” Anakin raised his eyebrows at Ben.

The two of them began to walk forward together, leaving no imprints in the sand. For the first time, walking forward didn’t seem quite as frightening as it once had been.

Ben Solo and Anakin Skywalker went to join their family. 

When Rey looked into the sunset that day, she wouldn’t find two Skywalkers, but five.

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, the one thing that I couldn't get out of my head after watching TRoS was that Ben's Force ghost should've shown up at the end... so this was my attempt to remedy that. Hope it was satisfactory.


End file.
